WHAT ARE YOU GOING THROUGH

A woman describes a series of encounters she has with various people in the ordinary course of her life. Some, like the old friend she goes to visit at a cancer clinic, are people she knows well; others are total strangers. All share a need to talk about themselves.

The narrator orchestrates this chorus of voices, sometimes paraphrasing others' stories, other times allowing them to speak, in extended monologues, for themselves. What emerges is a portrait of the way we live now, in a world endlessly troubled by crises, and the dramatically changing nature of human relationships in our time. For the most part, the narrator assumes the role of a passive listener to her collective storytellers. Then one of them surprises her with an extraordinary request, and she is drawn into what will become an intense and indelible experience of her own.

Sigrid Nunez has published seven novels, including A FEATHER ON THE BREATH OF GOD, NAKED SLEEPER, MITZ, FOR ROUENNA, THE LAST OF HER KIND, SALVATION CITY, and most recently THE FRIEND, which won the 2018 National Book Award for Fiction. She is also the author of SEMPRE SUSAN: A MEMOIR OF SUSAN SONTAG. Among the journals to which she has contributed are The New York Times, The New York Times Book Review, The Wall Street Journal, The Paris Review, Threepenny Review, Harper's, McSweeney's, Tin House, The Believer and newyorker.com. Her work has also appeared in several anthologies, including four Pushcart Prize volumes and four anthologies of Asian- American literature. One of her short stories has been selected for The Best American Short Stories 2019. Nunez's work has been translated into over twenty languages.
Sigrid's honors and awards include a Whiting Writer's Award, a Berlin Prize Fellowship, and two awards from the American Academy of Arts and Letters: the Rosenthal Foundation Award and the Rome Prize in Literature. The Friend won the 2018 National Book Award and was a finalist for the 2019 Simpson/Joyce Carol Oates Prize. She has taught at Columbia, Princeton, Boston University, and the New School, and has been a visiting writer or writer in residence at Amherst, Smith, Baruch, Vassar, Syracuse, and the University of California, Irvine, among others. Beginning in fall, 2019, she will be writer in residence at Boston University. Sigrid has also been on the faculty of the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference and of several other writers' conferences across the country. She lives in New York City.